"You're sure this is the right place?" Katherine asks, glancing up at the dilapidated building as she pulls the sealed jar of lamb's blood from the bag. Dean nods. She lets out a heavy sigh, shaking her head a bit, and unscrews the top of the jar. 

"You think something's in there?" Sam skeptically questions.

"I know it is," Dean answers.

"You sure you don't wanna stay in the car?" Katherine asks, dipping a silver dagger into the jar of blood. Sam shakes his head, not entirely sure her tone isn't patronizing...not entirely sure he isn't going to throw up. "Then stay behind me. Dean, you flank." She hands the dagger to him. "You see it, you fight your way close, stab it in the heart. And don't get yourself hurt." She pulls another knife from inside her jacket, coats that in blood, seals up the jar, and the three start into the building. Sam stays between the two, something that, in hindsight, was perhaps not the best idea. So Dean walks a bit to the side, Katherine ahead, with that bloody knife gripped tight in her hand.

Observing objectively, she looks absolutely lethal. All of her movements are carefully calculated. Her eyes dart around and her ears reach for sounds, even the smallest scurrying of rats. Each one of her steps are nearly silent. She's careful, but she's quick.

"See?" Sam murmurs. "There's nothing here."

Dean watches as Katherine rounds the corner. The very one she was attacked after. Dean's throat tightens.

"Carmen's got to be worried sick about you," the younger brother continues. Katherine's fist tightens around the handle of her knife.

"Shh," she hisses, holding a finger up to the brothers.

In the silence, the three can hear soft whimpers.

"What the hell is that?"

"Stay behind me," Katherine murmurs, continuing forward. "And keep your mouths shut."

It comes from further down the hall and around the other divider, the part neither Katherine or Dean had gotten the opportunity to clear. Around that bend are two corpses, practically skeletons, with their clothing still intact. They're bound at the wrists and strung up with rope dangling from the ceiling, hooked up to what could be a blood bag.

"What the hell?" Sam mutters.

There are more corpses. But there's also a girl, barely alive but still enough so that she could make a noise. Her clothes and fair skin are dirty, her hair is matted, but Dean recognizes her. He doesn't need Phantom Katherine prodding at his elbow and telling him that it's the girl that stared at him at the university because he already knows it to be true.

"It's her."

Katherine glances to Dean with furrowed brows. "Who?" She asks.

"Dean, what's going—?!"

Katherine clamps a hand over Sam's mouth, watching a shadow disturb the curtain not too far off. She turns on her toes and leaps away, trotting on the balls of her shoes as she does to keep quiet. Sam and Dean follow after her.

Around the corner comes the djinn, huge and bald and pale with dark swirls of patterns across his skin.

"Where's my dad?" The girl quietly whimpers.

"Sleep," the creature whispers to her, touching a hand to her cheek. Katherine's eyes narrow, studying the way he does it. The mist from his purple palm. Then he moves to the blood bag, pulls the tubing, and lets the blood ooze into his mouth. Sam grunts in disgust and the creature turns to the rack they hide behind with blazing blue eyes. Katherine tugs on Sam's hair, pushing him below eye level, and creeps around the rack as the djinn circles the other way, the Winchesters following quickly and closely behind her.

They wait under the stairs for the thing to retreat back to wherever it came from.

"This is real?" Sam breathes. "You're not crazy?"

"Been tryna tell you that," Katherine murmurs, glancing back to the motionless girl dangling by her wrists.

"She didn't know where she was," Dean says to her. Katherine nods in confirmation.

"She thought she was with her father." After a moment, she rolls to her full height and crosses over to the young girl, Dean at her side.

"What if that's what the djinn does?" Phantom Katherine asks, standing beside Dean with crossed arms. She speaks softly, as if her revelation would shatter the windows. "It doesn't grant you a wish, it just makes you think you have?"

Dean had actually vocalized this.

"That thing could come back," Sam says. "Let's get out of here."

Phantom Katherine tugs on Dean's jacket sleeve. "There are two other light bulbs," she murmurs. "Two other ropes. Two more victims?"

"Then where are they?" Katherine asks, staring up at the lamp with a curious brow and a tilted head.

Dean didn't realize he'd spoken aloud. He staggers a bit, feeling lightheaded. Images he hadn't known he was perceiving flood his brain, attack his system.

The real Katherine, the one he hunted the djinn with, is across the way from him, strung up on that other pole. He can't see her face. Her head is hung, blonde hair falling flat and dirtied over her shoulders.

"What if I'm like her?" Dean asks. "What if we're like her?"

"Dean," Sam pleads.

"What if we're tied up someplace in here?" Dean continues, glancing to Katherine. She's perplexed, staring up at that bulb. "What if this is all in my head?"

"How?" Katherine asks. "I don't understand any of this."

"Maybe it gives us some kind of supernatural acid," Dean murmurs, glancing back to the girl, and starts forward. "That purple mist? Maybe it feeds on us slow."

"Dean, that doesn't make sense," Sam says.

"Maybe I'm catching flashes of reality," Dean says. "First the girl, and then—" he glances to Katherine, standing beside him in the flannel. The Phantom version of her is behind the one in flannel, cautiously glancing over the huntress' face.

"How do we snap out of it?" Phantom Katherine asks, looking grave.

"We need to get out of here before that thing comes back," Sam says to Dean, grabbing his elbow, and soldiers forward. "Katherine."

She's still staring at the second post, frowning up at the light. "Are you seeing things?" Dean asks her.

"No," she murmurs, and slowly shakes her head.

Because this is in his head. This is his dream world. Not Katherine's. In a strange pang of curiosity, he glances to that second post, the one by the other girl, and wonders what Katherine is conjuring up in the real world. What her deepest, most sincere wish is.

Happiness? A life without hunting? Part of him wonders if he'll ever know.

"You're not real," Dean says, glancing from the young woman in the flannel to Sam. His brother gawks, glancing from him to the stairs, and back.

"Do you feel that?" He asks, squeezing his arms around Dean's bicep. Not nearly with as much strength as his Sammy has. "I'm real! This is not an acid trip. I'm real, and that thing is gonna come down here and kill us all for real. Now please—"

"There's one way to be sure," Dean says, tightening the grip on his knife.

"What are you doing?" Sam asks, quickly leaping away from Dean. Katherine carefully creeps forward, glancing on with caution.

"It's an old wives' tale," Dean says, almost entranced. "If you're about to die in a dream, you'll wake up."

"Old wives' tale," Katherine repeats. "Dean, you're not dreaming. Just—put the knife down, all right?" She moves toward him but Dean raises his knife defensively, and she backs off. "You're gonna kill yourself—"

"Or I'm gonna wake up." She nods after a moment. "One or the other."

"What if it's the former?" Katherine softly asks, her big blue eyes locking on Dean. His knees almost go weak, but Phantom Katherine is at his back, pushing the heel of her palm into his lower back.

"Be careful," she murmurs.

"I'm here with you," Katherine continues. "And so's Sam. And you're about to kill yourself."

"I'm pretty sure it's not—"

"I am," she says. "I am a doctor of medicine, I think I'm qualified." Dean tilts the knife towards himself, and in that moment, he's never seen Katherine's features contort so swiftly into so much rage.

"Wait!" She bellows.

Mary Winchester approaches Dean from the side, in her nightgown from 1983. And she's smiling. Phantom Katherine keeps her palm on Dean's shoulder and her other hand around his elbow, almost shielding half of herself, but keeping him anchored.

"Why'd you have to keep digging?" Sam quietly asks. "Why couldn't you have left well enough alone?" Jess stands beside him now. "You were happy."

"Put the knife down, honey," Mary coaxes.

"You're not real," Dean says. Phantom Katherine nods from beside him. "None of you are."

"I don't know if I should be offended," she murmurs.

"It doesn't matter," Katherine says, starting forward, and rests her hands on the buttons of his shirt. "It's better than anything you ever had."

"What?"

"It's everything you want," she continues, smiling softly. "You've got your mom. Sam's in law school, getting married...Jess is still here. And if it makes you happy, you can even have the girl. You have a family now. So...let's go home."

"But I'll die," he says. "The djinn will drain the life out of me in a couple of days. Out of you."

"In here, with us, it'll feel like a lifetime," she whispers, putting her hands on his cheeks. "You'll have years to spend with your mom. Sam and Jess. You can make things right. No more pain, or fear." Her eyes tear up and she forces herself to smile. "Don't you want to be happy? Don't you want to be happy with me?" His forehead comes to rest on hers, his eyes closing. "You don't have to worry about Sam anymore. He's safe now. You can watch him grow up...and we could have a family of our own, you and I," she whispers. "Why is it our job to save everyone? Please, just...give me the knife?"

Dean glances down to his fist, trembling with he grip around the silver, and slowly raises it up. Katherine's hands wrap around his own, her fingers moving to carefully pry the silver from his hand. "I'm sorry," he whispers, and he thrusts it between her ribs, right into her heart. Before she can even go limp on him, he pulls the knife from her body and thrusts it right into his middle.

The place is dark and cold. He can vaguely hear Sam shouting his name. That is Sam, isn't it? Yes. He's right in front of Dean, shaking his shoulder with wide, terrified eyes. "Oh, thank God," he breathes, reaching up to carefully pry the needle from Dean's neck. "I thought I lost you for a sec."

"You almost did," Dean grunts, his tongue like sandpaper in his mouth. His eyes drift across the way to Katherine's limp figure. "Sam," he squawks, and his brother starts to saw at the ropes around his wrists. "Katherine—"

"I'll get her," Sam says, nodding. A pair of blue eyes glows in the shadows to Dean's immediate left. With his heart weak enough already, his body so frail, this just might do him in. A sudden increase in his heart rate, a massive increase in blood volume.

A stroke is going to kill Dean Winchester.

"Sam!" The younger Winchester looks to his left and quickly swipes at the air with the knife.

As Sam struggles with the djinn, Dean tries to break from his restrains. He pulls and tries to simply lift his wrists from the hook, over and over again, until the rope finally snaps from a combination of Sam's cutting and Dean's pulling. By that time, the djinn has Sam in a chokehold and is moving its hand to his forehead, just like he saw it do to Katherine. Dean scrambles for the knife Sam dropped in the fight, scoops it up, and thrusts it into the djinn's back, directly behind its heart. For extra measure, and just because he can, he twists the knife. It's a fraction of the pain he felt in the last moments of his fantasy world.

Sam moves for Katherine almost immediately. She's still out of it. Her pulse is weak, and her usually warm skin is cold as ice.

"Katherine?" He asks, tilting her chin. "Kat, can you hear me?" She doesn't respond. The second he cuts her from the ropes and lifts her up into his arms, her big eyes snap open, and they're as dark as the night sky.

"Sam?" She croaks. She looks genuinely puzzled. And then as the fog lifts and she starts to remember, she goes into panic mode. "Where—where's Dean? Dean—"

"It's okay," Sam tells her, sushing her too. "He's okay. Dean's okay." She struggles to peer around Sam's arm.

"What happened?" She whispers. "Where am I?"

"You must've got caught by the djinn," Sam tells her. "We're in a warehouse, in downtown. Near Joliet."

Her lips pinch together, eyes searching Sam's face. She's assessing him.

His face is younger than the photos from her house. He's strong, holding her up in his arms. All of her weight.

The djinn?

The last thing she remembers, she and Dean were about to get into the crystal clear waters of Bora Bora. Snorkeling. Dean had already slipped into the water. She remembers him waiting for her, looking rather silly with those huge goggles and the breathing tube.

He fingers weakly grasp at his arm, craning around him to locate Dean. He's staring at a girl, hanging up from one of the posts they were both strung up to.

"She's still alive," Dean croaks.

"Come sit in the car with Katherine," Sam tells him, hurrying for the wall. "I'll come back for her."

"Sam—"

"Dean. Come on."

With a fleeing glance to the mystery girl, Dean hurries behind Sam. Katherine's eyes, big and pupils blown, are barely visible behind Sam's arm. She's struggling to keep sight of Dean, but he sees her fingers reach over to him. He reaches forward and grips her hand, and her head rests against Sam's arm, almost in relief.

They wait in the car, anxious and silent. Still gripping each other for dear life, having not spoken a word about their dream worlds. Just sitting in each other's company.

Dean and Katherine both felt better after the mystery girl had been taken to the hospital. In reality, they must've been there for a far shorter time than the other girl. After they get some food and water in them, they're almost of normal color. But still, no one has said anything.

In the morning, Sam and Katherine fetch her car from the warehouse. Just as they're returning to the motel room, Sam is getting off of the phone with the hospital. Dean sits at the edge of one of the beds, looking relatively normal, as he thumbs through a magazine.

"The girl's been stabilized," Sam informs Dean.

"Good," Dean murmurs, closing his magazine. He doesn't look up.

Katherine instinctually wants to move towards him. Wrap her arms around his, lean her head on his shoulder. It's what she'd done for years, or what felt like it anyway. That was usually a good way to make Dean feel better. Physical contact. And food.

"How about you two?" Sam asks. "You all right? Haven't said a word."

Dean nods first. "Yeah, I'm all right." Katherine turns to the window, pulling at her lower lip. Sam focuses on her, the evasive body language. Folded up onto her chair, arm crossed over her chest, she's made herself smaller. "You should've seen it, Sam," his brother continues, a slight sad smile on his face. "Our lives. You were such a wussy." Sam quietly laughs.

"So we didn't get along, then. Huh?"

Dean clicks his tongue. "Naw."

"I thought it was supposed to be this...perfect fantasy."

"It wasn't," Dean immediately says, nearly cutting his brother off. "I wished for Mom to live. Mom never died, we never went hunting, we never met Katherine." She listens, but barely, and doesn't look away from the window.

She's recalling everything from that life she never had. That she supposes she never will have.

Gracie lost a tooth first. She was crying—she didn't know what it meant. Dean was trying to calm her down, insist it was a good thing, and he was frantic. Flustered. First time parenting, especially twins, is a toughie. Connor sat back and stared at Grace before moving over to her, wrapped one arm around her shoulder, and patted his hand against her chest.

"It's okay, Gracie," he said. "My friend Tommy lost his tooth yesterday, and when he came to school today, he said the tooth fairy gave him ten dollars!"

Dean slowly turned to Katherine, crouched on the floor with Grace, and just stared at his wife with the plainest expression he could muster. "Ten dollars."

"Tooth fairy must be makin' bank, huh?" Katherine hummed, sitting back in the sofa.

"I'm glad you dug yourselves out," Sam says, bringing her back to reality. This reality that now she thinks of as so strange. She doesn't feel heavy like she did in her dreams. She isn't breastfeeding in this world. There's no fullness of her chest. No twinge of life in her belly. She'd hadn't yet told Dean the fourth was on the way. Absently, her arm moves across her abdomen, almost protective of that small, unborn child. There's no weight on her back from carrying Connor up the stairs. No laughter or ghost noises. No barking puppy or baby babble.

It's all very empty.

"Most people wouldn't have had the strength," Sam continues. "They would have stayed."

"Lucky me," Dean dryly muses. "I gotta tell you though, man. You had Jess. Mom was gonna have grandkids." Katherine glances down to her slender fingers, twisting at a loose thread in the bottom of her shirt.

"Yeah, but Dean...it wasn't real."

Katherine struggles to maintain her composure. It wasn't real. She had the perfect life. Absolutely perfect. Angel children. A warm husband. A good job, amazing friends. Her mother.

It wasn't real.

"I know," Dean says, sitting up on the table with crossed arms. "But I wanted to stay. I wanted to stay so bad. You know, ever since Dad...all I—" He takes a deep breath. "All I can think about is how much this job's cost us. We've lost so much, we've sacrificed so much." Katherine drags the back of her hand across her cheekbone, wiping away her tears.

"People are alive because of you," Sam says. Dean shakes his head. "It's worth it, Dean. It's not fair, and it hurts like Hell...but it's worth it."

Maybe Sam is also speaking to Katherine's silence. His curiosities about what she saw. She hasn't said a word since after they dropped the girl off at the hospital.

After Katherine's moved back into her motel room, perhaps to sleep for a few hours before they hit the road, Dean weasels his way into the connecting room, shutting the door behind him.

"Hey," he murmurs. She smiles a bit in response, one side of her mouth pulling up a bit more than the other. It's warm, genuine. She's curled up at the headboard, a jacket zipped up around her shoulders. "Can I come in?"

"You're already in," she points out with a soft chuckle.

He laughs a little stupidly. "Right. I, uh...I just wanted to talk to you. Figured you could relate more, since you went through it, too." Katherine nods a little stiffly, and he sits beside her on the bed, staring at his hands. "Everything felt real to me. Everything." She nods again, a bit less robotic. "When I woke up, I...was in this place...an apartment in Lawrence. I had a girlfriend." He chuckles, shaking his head. "She was a nurse. Her name was Carmen."

"That's not a name you hear every day," Katherine hums, sitting up a bit. Dean shakes his head in agreement.

"No, it isn't. I didn't know what had happened. Where you went, why I was where I was. All I remembered was the djinn pinning you up against that wall...and then everything goes dark." Dean shrugs a bit. "I called Sam first...when I asked about you, about the djinn, he had no idea what I was talking about. Then I called you." Dean stares at his hands. "I musta woke you up. You sounded like it, anyway. I could see you in my mind, how you sit up and close your eyes, rest on your elbow when you talk." A soft smile twitches at Katherine's lips, and her heart thumps against her ribs. "I told you some of the most personal things I knew about you. Those freckles on your shoulder. You, uh...you sounded pretty alarmed. And—this is kinda funny—you remember Jiminy Cricket?" Katherine nods. "Yeah. You were my Jiminy Cricket. Sarcastic shit you were, too." She chuckles. "Then a couple'a days later, or maybe it was the next day, I can't remember. You broke into my apartment and attacked me, pinned me to the ground and had a knife at my throat."

"Oh, so like what you did to me the other year?"

"Yeah, 'cept you kicked my ass, and not the other way around." She grins, shaking her head, and Dean smiles with her. "I was...amazed at the hunter you were. You did the job. But you weren't...you. You were stern, I guess. Stated the facts. You definitely weren't as sweet on me as you are."

"I'm sweet as honey," Katherine softly protests. Dean chuckles, glancing down to his fidgeting hands. "What's wrong?"

He shakes his head. "Just...something my conscience told me. In one of those prattling sessions you tend to have."

"Oh? And what did I say?"

Dean swallows. It's now or never. Don't be a coward. "It was in your usual fashion of calling me out on my shit. I was complaining, naturally. And you asked if I was willing to fight for what makes me happy."

Katherine shifts a bit, her breath hitching in her throat. "Oh?" Dean nods.

"Katherine..." He hesitates. "What was your world like?"

Coward.

Katherine takes a deep breath in through her nose, glancing off to the wall. "I, um...don't know if I'm ready to talk about it just yet," she murmurs. "Everything is still so..."

"Painful?" Dean hums. After a moment, Katherine nods. "I have to tell you something," he murmurs. "And it's just so you know. So I don't kick myself later for not ever telling you...for missing out on what could make me the happiest grunt on this planet."

"You're not a grunt, Dean," she quietly murmurs, chuckling a bit.

"Katherine Louise, the moment you walked into my life, it's been a different world." Dean shakes his head. "I've never had fun with anyone the way we do. I've never...I've never been able to sit next to someone without saying anything and just...enjoy their company. Never." He stares over at her, watching her pale cheeks flush pink. Her eyes are evenly blue and green, eyelashes tangling with overgrown fringe. "And I've never...cared so deeply about someone. These past couple of months without you've been Hell. And I'll never forgive myself for what I did that day, what I said to you, because I missed out on what could've been some of the greatest times of my life. You make me happy. And I'm sick of waking up every morning with this pit in my stomach, knowing you're with Charlie. Knowing that it's because of me. So I'm gonna fight for you. Tooth and nail. I don't care how long it takes, but...I'm willing to wait forever, if that's what you need. If you need more time to forgive me doing what I did. Turning your heart into...squashed heart soup." He barely manages a chuckle.

Katherine's big eyes are filled with tears. She's never been so still in her life. And it terrifies Dean, more than any hunt he's ever been on. He wishes he could read her mind, or that she'd at least say something. As he stands up to leave, she finally speaks.

"Dean, I never held that against you."